First, he picked up his third major labor endorsement, winning over the 75,000-member building workers union 32BJ. He earlier got the nod from the sanitation and retail workers unions.

Then a new Quinnipiac poll showed the mayor enjoys a strong position in a Democratic primary. His approval ratings are very good among Democrats and especially African-Americans. The poll showed little support in a primary for his most likely opponent, city Comptroller Scott Stringer, probably because 63% of voters said they did not know enough about him to have an opinion.

Who approves of the mayor

Group

%

Democrats

63%

African-Americans

77%

Hispanics

57%

Mayor vs. primary opponents

Candidate

%

Bill de Blasio

34%

Christine Quinn

15%

Scott Stringer

9%

Ruben Diaz, Jr.

7%

Eric Adams

6%

Source: Quinnipiac poll, November 2016

Of course, there can always be major surprises. The one possibility that came up in my conversations with the experts this week is that the poll numbers will change if the mayor faces charges in the U.S. attorney’s continuing investigations of his fundraising. The key here is that for it to matter, the mayor himself would have to be indicted. After all, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been dinged but not severely damaged by indictments of two of his closest advisers.

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A nonprofit provider of shelters and supportive-housing for women and children has reached a deal to develop 17 new affordable apartments it will operate on the Upper East Side.

Women in Need, run by former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, will lease the 17 two-bedroom apartments that investors plan to build on the site of a theater they purchased in recent weeks at 316 E. 91st St. for roughly $13.5 million. The property owners, including the investment firms RiverOak and Azimuth Development, plan to knock down the three-story structure to make way for a seven-story apartment building. Quinn's group will use the space to house homeless women and their children.

The developers also filled the ground and basement floors, which together total about 6,000 square feet, with a day care facility called Sunshine Early Learning Center.

RiverOak and Azimuth are leasing the space to Women in Need below market rate to support the nonprofit's social mission. To make the roughly $27.5 million project pencil out financially, the pair are participating in a facet of the city's inclusionary-housing program that grants them development rights to sell within a half-mile radius or in the same community district as the affordable development. The pair received about 80,000 square feet and said they already have contracts or handshake agreements to sell those rights to several projects in the neighborhood.

"It's a great program because we're making no money off the leases and this project wouldn't be possible economically without the proceeds from the sale of the air rights," said Stephen DeNardo, the founder and CEO of RiverOak.

DeNardo said he couldn't disclose how much the two developers will net from the sale of the air rights because they're still in negotiations with buyers. He estimated that his firm will earn 150% on its investment in the deal, a lucrative return in the world of affordable-housing development.

"We're expecting to get more calls to do deals like this," he said.

RiverOak and Azimuth did something similar earlier this year, buying a site at 320 E. 60th St., where they are now building a 21-unit affordable building. Through the same inclusionary-housing program they received another approximately 80,000 square feet of development rights that they can sell in the neighborhood at market-rate prices.

"We saw the demand we received for the air rights on the East 60th Street project, and that's part of why we felt confident to do another development like this," DeNardo said. "We knew there were buyers for these air rights."

The roughly 25,000-square-foot building RiverOak and Azimuth are raising at 316 E. 91st St. is expected to be finished in 2018. They aim to complete 321 E. 60th St. midway through 2017.

Quinn recently criticized City Hall for failing to stem the rise of the city's homeless population, which now includes 60,000 in shelters. Quinn pointed out that women and children make up 70% of shelter residents, Women in Need's target group. WIN has pushed to create more housing for them, recently announcing two new full-service shelters in Brooklyn.

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Amid whirling questions on his delayed and over-budget Superstorm Sandy recovery program, a helicopter trip from Prospect Park and the police killing of a 66-year-old schizophrenic woman in the Bronx, Bill de Blasio set sail this week for 2017.

At the beginning of what proved to be a tumultuous week for the mayor, he announced that top adviser Phil Walzak will leave his City Hall post to focus on the re-election campaign. After months of speculation about challengers and poll numbers that keep them at bay, de Blasio seemed eager to get on with the race.

"I have been to this rodeo many times," the mayor said. "We are going to take a very aggressive approach and it's the simplest way to say it."

De Blasio said his campaign had hired Revolution Digital, a marketing firm that led online organizing for Sen. Bernie Sanders, which the mayor said would help "hone a grassroots approach" and deliver "an activist campaign."

The mayor's adoption of Sanders-style, small-donor fundraising should give him some cover from the kind of criticism his nonprofit fundraising aroused. The now-shuttered Campaign for One New York took millions of dollars from city power players, leaving the mayor mired in a handful of investigations.

His helicopter ride from Brooklyn to an event in Queens, captured on a cellphone video by one of his Park Slope neighbors, sparked a round of de Blasio-bashing by his enemies, even though the mayor uses the chopper far less than his predecessors did. (The mayor's office said the NYPD makes decisions on modes of transportation, but media reports dug up an old quote from a de Blasio spokesman indicating his boss chooses not to use the helicopter much.)

The chopper story became yesterday's news, however, when the police shooting shook the Bronx on Wednesday night. It seemed not to hurt the mayor politically, though, as police-union criticism that he and NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill had prematurely called the shooting a mistake did not resonate with New Yorkers.

Meanwhile, potential primary contenders were elevating their profiles. City Comptroller Scott Stringer received an award Wednesday from New York Communities for Change—an early backer of de Blasio in the 2013 mayoral race. Former City Council speaker Christine Quinn criticized the mayor's approach to homeless shelter-building and took aim at his housing plan at an Association for a Better New York breakfast Thursday. Those two and others, including Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., are poised to spring into campaign mode should indictments connected to de Blasio or embarrassing emails render the mayor more vulnerable.

"I always expect serious challenges as a strategic matter," the mayor said. "I always assume there will be strong challenges and we have to be prepared."

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Nonprofit executive and former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn went after Mayor Bill de Blasio on his signature effort Thursday, arguing that his housing plan is not the answer to her homeless clients' needs.

Quinn, who lost the 2013 mayoral primary to de Blasio and now runs homeless-services organization Win, said the administration's plan to build or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing does not sufficiently address the homelessness crisis.

"The problem is, too much of this affordable housing isn't actually affordable for Win families, for extremely low-income families," she said in a midtown speech.

The average family in a Win shelter earns $15,600 a year after wages and public benefits, Quinn told an Association for a Better New York breakfast. As of July, 14% of the affordable housing units created under de Blasio's plan served households at that income level. The mayor also committed to building 15,000 supportive-housing units on top of the 200,000 planned.

Quinn called for the city and state to increase subsidies to build more housing for the very low-income and proposed that the city establish a specific set-aside for homeless families. She also suggested that de Blasio appoint a temporary affordable-housing czar to coordinate such efforts, an idea the administration quickly dismissed.

"This is not about more layers of bureaucracy," a spokeswoman for the mayor said in a statement. "[The] city already has the biggest affordable-housing program in the nation and is set to meet its targets."

In wide-ranging remarks, Quinn offered advice to the mayor on how to wrangle NIMBY shelter protesters ("Use the bully pulpit") and detailed programmatic issues her nonprofit faces.

The former speaker ripped "coldhearted" anti-shelter protesters of the kind who recently foiled plans for a shelter in Maspeth, Queens.

"I don't want to be with you when you get called to your Maker 'cause you're not going to do very well," she said of them.

Social-service providers rarely take the podium for political speeches or dare to air their specific concerns about city policy in public. Quinn told reporters that she is making use of her experience in politics and media to push Win's issues, not gearing up for a new campaign.

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The Landmarks Preservation Commission is set to introduce a new South Village Historic District early next month—a move that will both appease preservationists and help grease the wheels for a massive mixed-use project nearby.

Organizations including the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation have pushed the commission to landmark 10 blocks to the southern portion of the existing South Village Historic District, which is roughly bounded by Sixth Avenue, West Fourth Street, LaGuardia Place and Houston Street, called Sullivan-Thompson Historic District. And in late August, City Councilman Corey Johnson, the local representative for the area, made the district's expansion one of the conditions for his approval of a proposed 1.7-million-square-foot project, St. John's Center, set to rise at 550 Washington St., across the street from Pier 40 in Hudson River Park. That project, which is also supported by the Hudson River Park Trust and the de Blasio administration, needs City Council approval.

"If we are to approve the 550 Washington St. application, the city must also extend landmark protections to the historic blocks south of Houston Street," said Johnson during testimony before the City Planning Commission.

The de Blasio administration supports the project for a number of reasons, though mainly because 25% of the proposed 1,586 apartments will be enrolled in the city's affordable housing program. However, it needs Johnson's vote, since the council typically defers to the local representative on land-use matters. Meanwhile, the Hudson River Park Trust wants the pending rezoning application to go through because it's selling $100 million worth of air rights from Pier 40 to the developers, a team of Westbrook Partners and Atlas Capital Group. The trust plans to use the cash to repair the deteriorating dock.

By putting the South Village Historic District expansion on its to-do list, the city is meeting one of Johnson's demands—something that the Bloomberg administration did in a similar situation in 2013, when the South Village Historic District was expanded from its the initial 2011 boundary in order to get former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to sign off on a proposal to allow residential development in Hudson Square.

"The city had to be forced to [expand the district] in exchange for the Hudson Square rezoning," said Andrew Berman, head of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, which has sought to have the entire district landmarked for a decade. "Just like this time around."

However, the designation does not guarantee that Johnson will give the St. John's Center project a thumbs-up. While the developers have already made a number of alterations to the project in response to other community concerns, groups including Berman's want to prohibit destination retail at the site. Johnson has also asked for a transportation study and permanently prohibiting the Hudson River Park Trust from selling more of its unused development rights to sites within Community District 2, which runs from the West Village in the north down to Hudson Square and Little Italy in the south, a move that would limit development in the district.

Hudson River Park is home to millions of square feet of unused development rights that exist on commercial piers. The trust plans to eventually sell some of those rights to the owners of upland development sites, though most of those rights are concentrated farther north in the park.

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New York City has grown faster since 2010 than at any other time in its modern history. And for good reason—it has never been safer, and it has been creating jobs at a record clip.

One problem: We can’t fit everybody. Housing vacancy rates are low, and affordable housing is harder to find than a subway seat during rush hour. And if recent political setbacks are any indication, our housing crisis is about to get even worse.

A city-backed project in Inwood was shot down by the City Council last month because of local concerns over density and displacement, despite it promising a healthy amount of badly needed affordable housing. Now, similar projects in the queue seem likely to falter, as skeptical residents appear to have more influence than usual over land-use decisions.

Real estate developers should take note and adapt accordingly. During the Bloomberg administration, massive upzonings sponsored by the city had a low failure rate in the council. Almost all decision-making was done in the rooms and alcoves of City Hall.

But simply persuading lawmakers and city officials to build is no longer enough. Now, the New Yorkers they represent also have to be convinced.

Local opposition to projects is hardly new in New York. In fact, it’s as common as a Bronx cheer. But it tends to shape development, not kill it.

So why is NIMBYism suddenly so potent? Ironically, the very political movement that carried Mayor Bill de Blasio into office is slowing his administration’s development plans.

Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and a tightly controlled City Council, deals were sweetened and handed out to move projects through. If that didn’t work, political pressure was applied on the local council member. In some cases, local members were even overruled by their colleagues. For instance, former Council Speaker Christine Quinn pushed through a tall project against the wishes of Councilman David Yassky in 2009. The building now stands beside the Brooklyn Bridge in Dumbo.

But that strategy is not dependable anymore under a more activist, independent council. When the current council first convened in 2014, it adopted reforms that gave individual members more power, creating a culture of egalitarianism long-sought by the rank and file.

Perhaps more important, the coalition that won de Blasio the mayoralty and appears to be the dominant political bloc going forward—led by unions and activist organizations—is to his left on development.

Together, these changes mean any council member who wants a future in city politics usually stands to gain more by saying no to large developments unless they include far more affordable housing than the mayor’s ambitious zoning requires. Even then, council members will always feel pressure from constituents with much more parochial concerns, such as building height and density.

But there is a solution for City Hall and real estate companies: actually convince would-be neighbors of these developments that saying yes is in their interest. Indeed, members often want to vote for projects that would help the community, but will not do so without local support. And there are very credible arguments to be made, especially when so much affordable housing is on the table.

City Hall has struggled to rally local support for projects, but at least it has tried. Developers, on the other hand, often fail to connect with the constituents of their projects, preferring instead an insider strategy.It would be better for them—and for residents—to engage in serious campaigns to educate and motivate. Going to the local community board hearing is not enough. Project representatives must bend the ears of influential locals and groups, as well as pick their brains before the land-use process is even underway. They must then update and solicit feedback from the community throughout.

Many real estate companies shy away from such openness and engagement, believing it will just create opportunities for naysayers to upend their projects. They also can’t imagine scenarios with no serious opposition. After all, they’re disrupting the neighborhood and usually building much wider and taller than what’s already there.

But we famously tough New Yorkers can be amazingly pliable when respected. We’re also dealmakers. The first step is to look us in the eye.

Evan Thies is a political consultant and co-founder of Pythia Public, a public-affairs firm whose clients include real estate companies.